I’ve lost the story for this, but recently Spike Lee spoke out about how remake heavy Hollywood has become and the complete lack of imagination of its Producers, good on you Spike, glad to see you’ve been reading the Movie Blog and keeping in touch.
Well now Susan Sarandon has spoken out about a similar subject, from The Scotsman (that’s me that is):
“I wouldn’t do most of the movies men do. It’s a shame they’re paid so much more and have more leading roles, but they’re not necessarily good parts.
“It is up to everybody to tell stories they care about. If everybody did that, it would not all be about white males of a certain age. I would hope people in a position to green-light films would have more imagination.”
Wouldn’t we all. I wish more stars would be more vocal about this topic, and a lot of topics to be honest. What do you think? Is it getting time for the stars to stand up and start changing Hollywood from the inside?
What if Eastwood had never stepped behind the camera? No Unforgiven.
Or Hanks? No Band of Brothers. Deniro? Bronx Tale. Ok I’ll stop but there’s plenty of actors who branched out to make some of the best films of all time. This issue came up way back in Hollywoods early days when Chaplin and others branched out and started United Artists. It was designed to give more power to film artists intead of executives but alas as always seems to happen the money wins out. I would like to see the artists buy back UA and start over. Then again there are some studios that specialize in artistic films such as Miramax and Fox Searchlite. The thing is they need money to finance the smaller oftentimes better films so they still need to make the occasional blockbuster with a cookie-cutter script, produced by Jerry Bruckhiemer and directed by Michael Bay to get the asses in the seats and the money in the bank. Because when is the last Merchant/Ivory film to pass a hundred Million dollars? It’s kind of love/hate.
“If they want to branch out they can get into craft services.”
OMG, I almost snorted Diet Coke out of my nose toward my LCD panel. Thank you for the laugh, R. :-)
So creative forces like Robert De Niro should be stopped from being behind the camera immediately?
Well, sure…you can’t really generalize about anything, but a *lot* of actors have no business behind the camera. If they want to branch out they can get into craft services. ;-)
Same thing with directors, though. Even though they have the most powerful union and people see them as the controlling force behind the films they make, a lot of the real work comes from the producer. A producer may be involved with a project for a decade before a director or an actor comes on-board. If you’re going to generalize, it’s a good producer who can shade a film with subtlety and craftsmanship, but recently the trend has been for MBAs with very little sense of artistry to try to produce and a lot of the results have been dismal.
Sarandon epitomizes the worst of the Hollywood elite. She says one thing, but I’d imagine if you’d ask her for an example of the type of project she’d greenlight that very few people would express any advance interest in seeing it.
Bottom-line: actors are paid very well to act. Do your job, let the directors do their job, let the writers do their job, and Tinseltown — even with its shortcomings — would probably have a much better chance.
I don’t think you can make a blanket statement that Actors shouldn’t get involved. That’s a crazy thing to say, it’s suggesting that people cannot evolve in their career.
There are many people who have moved from actors to become Directors, and there are many success stories of actors who direct – Clooney is a most recent example.
I don’t think this is a bad thing, but what experience is showing is that generally they are using their status in a bad way and negatively affecting the movie. This seems to happen more with the celebrity actors rather than the real actors. Both Sarandon and Lee are showing ways in which the better talents can influence the industry in a positive way. Recent stories of Morgan Freeman and his influence towards a movie download company is another example of a positive voice.
When artistic vision gives way to the bottom line, we end up with prefab shit that is cranked out by the dozen every second of every day. The problem isn’t lack of talent, lack of scripts, or even lack of vision, it’s that movie making is a business, and too much emphasis is put on the returns not the magic making.
Exactly. Actors have way too much input as it is. Directors are getting tied to actors now for production funds. Spielberg is in business with Hanks and Cruise, Scorsese is dependent on DiCaprio…what Hollywood really needs is a few producers with real artistic vision to shake things up a little. Not that there aren’t any out there, but as people have pointed out, they’re in the minority. Always have been, but it seems really more dismal than ever right now.
Ok… A couple of points here…
First of all I think it’s important to keep in mind that Hollywood does not JUST put out crap (although, as I’ve stated before about 7 out of 10 of them are). Every year Hollywood gives us some fantastic and memorable motion pictures.
Secondly… I think if the actors (whose role in Hollywood I’ve always said is massivley overrated) were to influence decision making… then the problem would just get worse. Actors wants ta get paid. The more profitable the projects, the bigger the pay cheques. I contend that if actors “called the shots” you would see just as many films being made just for the profit margin as we do now.
But the point Surandon makes is well stated. 7 out of 10 is just unacceptable. Hollywood execs need to realize that in their pursuit to get good boxoffice returns is in fact doing the opposite.
…and why shouldn’t models do that? Otherwise it’s sit down and accept what they dish out.
It’s like saying we as an audience should accept the pulp coming out of Hollywood. Shut up, switch off our websites and go watch the movies like Dukes!
That’s definitely not for me!
I agree with what she’s saying, but that’s a little like asking models to stand up and change the fashion industry. What was the old Hitchcock quote, “I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors
should be treated like cattle.”